Lossless classics

All thanks for this go toLemarquisThe Argentinean pianist Bruno Leonardo Gelber was born in 1941. At the age of seven, he was stricken with poliomyelitis and confined to bed for a year. This didn’t prevent him, at the age of twenty, from winning a scholarship to travel to Paris to study with the great pedagogue Marguerite Long. That same year, 1961, he won third prize in the Long-Thibaud Competition. His subsequent concert career has taken him all over the world.

Brahms composed his First Piano Concerto at the age of twenty-five in 1858, and gave the first performance a year later in Hanover, Germany. The work had a lengthy gestation, starting as a symphony, then a sonata for two pianos, and finally as a concerto in the form we know it today. It is large in scale and the piano and the orchestra take on equal roles. Here is Brahms as both a young man and red-blooded romantic. This Munich performance is epic and monumental, Olympian in stature. Gelber’s technical command is awesome. Exquisite handling and voicing of chords, coupled with judicious use of pedal for tonal colour, all add up to a pretty impressive achievement. The whole reading is classical in approach, rather than what some would term romantic. The dramas are played out, throughout, with an eye on the whole narrative. The second movement is beautifully realized, with the Munich strings playing with richness and warmth. In the third movement, the orchestra responds well to Decker’s inspirational conducting to deliver an energized and vital performance.

A great recording by Bruno Leonardo whom I met a few years ago.He told me
that he can not perform more than 5 times a year now. His severe Illness is expanding from year to year. A great human being and a great pianist. All his recordings will be in the hall of fame of Records. Trottar

Gelber does indeed belong in the Pantheon for this performance of what is perhaps Brahm’s greatest work. I always think of Rubinstein and Reiner here but Gelber reveals much of the Romantic side of this tragedy with his air and mastery, and the Munich Orchestra under Decker has tempos just right! If I were as honoured as Trottar to meet such a great man, I would surely kiss his hand.

After Trottar wrote, that BLG performs only very few concerts per year, due to his health problems, I feel very honoured to have seen him live here at the “Old Opera” in my town, about 10 years ago or more 😀